This week: new algorithms to lower the cost of secure computing, Project Tango takes on the museum experience, and more useful tools for developers like the Google Play Developer Policy Center.

TL;DR 018 — March 18th, 2016

Open Source

We recently open-sourced three new hash function implementations: faster, data-parallel versions of SipHash; a fast cryptographically strong pseudorandom function; and the entirely new HighwayHash, which reaches even higher speeds thanks to the data parallel features of modern computers. Check out the post for more info and the GitHub links.

Cloud

Learn how to build your own recommendation engine using machine learning on Google Compute Engine with this post from the Google Cloud Platform Team.

Want to know why your application is slow? Cloud Trace for Google Cloud Platform can help. Today, we’re adding more features and functionality including automatic tracing and performance analysis for all App Engine projects and Latency shift detection. As always, the post has more.

Apps Script

Add-ons run inside Google Sheets, Docs, and Forms, but they’re built by developers like you. Check out this post, for five simple design tips to help make your add-on a pleasure to use. And don’t worry if you’re not an artist — these are basic concepts that anyone can apply.

Android

Optimizing retention before investing in acquisition and retaining users with step-by-step engagement are concepts that come from the world of games. Learn how you can use these tips and insights from successful game developers in your app with this post from Google Play.

We’ve redesigned our Developer Program Policy Center to communicate our policies with greater transparency and clarity. From making it easier to self-correct minor violations in minutes using the app publishing status feature to improving our policy communication, the new policy center is part of our ongoing effort to improve the developer experience.

Project Tango

We recently invited Mobile World Congress attendees into the National Art Museum of Catalonia with Project Tango developer kits loaded with GuidiGO (a museum tour app) and Glympse (a location-sharing app); to experience augmented reality and indoor navigation for themselves. And it was really cool. Check out the post for more details and a video of the experience.

Public-Key Encryption

Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman have won the 2015 ACM Turing Award, commonly known as the “Nobel Prize of Computing.” Their 1976 paper entitled “New Directions in Cryptography” introduced public-key encryption which is a foundational technology for the commercial World Wide Web.